Principle 12 Accumulating Actions – Week 3 – 2025

December 18, 2025 

Principle 12. Accumulating Actions. Week 3

“Contradictory and unifying acts accumulate within you. If you repeat your acts of internal unity, then nothing can detain you.” 

Last Time: Water and Stone

This time: Memory, and Actions, The Internal and The External

This Week:

This week we’ll turn to considering this principle in relation to the present moment. 

For example: Can I see one current situation, or interaction where depending on my response I may end up feeling conflicted, or unitive (in agreement with myself)? Can I see how certain habitual ways of thinking, feeling, or acting (positive or negative) have led me, forgetter or worse to the situation I’m now in? 

To help gain some new perspectives we will also play  

The Game of the Week.

Name It!

With your understanding of the principle in mind, try to come up with a new version of the principle, or some aspect of the principle. Then give that new formulation a name that synthesizes it or, in some way captures its essence.

For example, keeping in mind Silo’s comment in the Inner Look mentioned below I sometimes think of this principle as the principle of the road already travelled.

Personal Reflections:

Here’s a few thoughts related to this month’s principle. I hope you find them of some use in your own reflections.  

The first things I’ll ask myself as I begin this week’s meditation on the principles might seem like obvious questions. But somehow I often overlook them.

What actions am I accumulating here and now? Is it contradiction or unity that is growing in me? How can I move further from the contradictions? How can I move closer to the source of that internal unity?

In earlier conversations about this principle some of you explained that you  were examining how it is that actions accumulate. Of course, my actions accumulate in my memory, but we should emphasize that memory isn’t something unchanging that stands separate from other factors. Memory is not a sack, or a collection of files where the past is preserved for future reference — certainly not something isolated and unchanging. 

I can see how acting in certain habitual ways has led to present situations that are, to varying degrees unitive, contradictory, or neutral. These past actions and their results were recorded all together in my memory. And they continue to act over me in the present and also condition how I see the future.

I can also see how that memory (something “internal”) is configuring my situation (something “external”). Is it too much to say that my present relations with others, my current situation, my reality are somehow a form of memory. That brings to mind Silo’s phrase from his 1990 talk about the book Contributions to Thought: 

“That world that I take as reality itself is in fact my own biography in action, and that action of transformation that I effect in and upon the world is my own transformation.”

I find I have a lot to think on this week along with my considerations about how I understand my present actions in light of the Principle of Accumulation. I also will be trying to remember to play the game of Name It! That is, summarizing the principle, and expressing some central aspect of my understanding synthetically, and expressing that in new name for it. But another thing I want to focus on in my meditations this week is the first of two paragraphs that follow Principle 12 in chapter 13 of The Inner Look (of course next week we’ll consider the second of these). It repeats something that we have seen Silo insist on in various contexts, i.e. the importance of understanding what is a contradiction. 

You will be like a force of Nature when it finds no resistance in its path. Learn to distinguish what is a difficulty, a problem, an inconvenience, from what is a contradiction. While those may move you or spur you on, contradiction traps you in a closed circle with no way out.

The first sentence was mentioned by Cristian at our meeting this week. I agree with him about its importance. What does Silo mean by a force of nature? What does it mean when that it finds no resistance in its path? In what sense could I become like that?

For the moment I will only suggest that he makes that hinge on my actions and not the circumstances in which I find myself.

Then the crux of the matter, to learn to distinguish various impediments, and unpleasant situations from that war with myself which seems to allow no solution.

Coming Up:

 This week we consider the principle in relation to present situations. Next week we’ll look at what it might mean for us in regards the future.

Remember:

Contradiction inverts life. This inversion of the growing stream of life is experienced as suffering. Thus, suffering is the signal that warns us of the need to change the direction of the opposing forces.

I believe you will know how to distinguish between a difficulty, which is welcome since you can leap over it, and a contradiction—a lonely labyrinth without exit. 

Silo_ The Internal Landscape chapter IX: 1,12 

Worth Repeating:

And what is the flavor of an act of unity? If you would recognize it, rely on that profound peace which, accompanied by a gentle joy, leads you into agreement with yourself. This act bears the sign of the most integral truth, for in it, thought, feeling, and action in the world are united in the most intimate friendship. Yes, valid action is unmistakable; you would affirm it a thousand times over should you live as many lives!

Silo_ The Internal Landscape X-IV

Note:

I have offered to host next week’s meeting. I hope to see you there. These notes have been sent to our email list, posted on Facebook and on my website  www.dzuckerbrot.com